Summertime Blues

 

Today is June 12, 2026. The Red Sox were off last night (thank god) but are threatening to play again tonight.

This season has been horrible - historically, epically bad. I take no joy in reporting how they lose from day to day, or tracking their downward trajectory in the standings, but there's little else to distract me.

I'm not jumping on the Knicks' bandwagon in the NBA Finals. As a longtime (pre-Bird) Celtics fan, I'm biologically incapable of cheering for the Knicks, or any New York team for that matter. 

And fuck FIFA. Sorry, but I don't have World Cup fever. I'd like to say I lost all respect for FIFA when they gave the Stable Genius that faux FIFA peace prize, but even if that didn't happen, I'm not spending my summer watching a bunch of grown men in shorts run around kicking a ball up and down the field with occasional outbursts of comically long shouts of "Goal!" That brand of football isn't for me, I'm taking a hard pass, and won't be covering the games here.

Then there's the burlap heroes, those brave men and women out there all alone facing the planet's extreme conditions. Some guy is attempting a Forrest Gump, coast-to-coast walk across the entire United States, but it's somehow tied in to the FIFA World Cup and besides, he's almost finished, so good for him, but nothing much to say about it here. 

Ella Hibbert still plans on completing her solo sail around the Arctic Ocean, and has been on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea for a month now painting and prepping her boat, the Yeva. I covered her voyage here last season and it provided a delightful distraction from last season's Sox, but while I know that the Siberian icepack melts late and there's no point in starting now, until she actually starts sailing, there's nothing to report on.

Tamara Klink, who sailed the Northwest Passage last summer while Capt. Hibbert was also passing through the archipelago, has written a book (in Portuguese) and is currently on the Brazilian talk-show circuit promoting it. It looks like there will be nothing to cover on her this season, although who knows what she'll do next?     

This July, a woman will attempt to swim the entire coastline of California. I plan to cover her feat once she get started, but until then, it looks like I've got nothing but the Red Sox to occupy my time. Sox on the mind. 

This summer's brutal!